Architecture is stuck between past and future -- years of anticipatory planning designs a structure that, once constructed, is stuck referring to all that came before. A building can't actually predict the future, although it seems like the best ones always run the risk of trying. Jonathan... View full entry »

Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki has gathered a throng of designers including Toyo Ito, Sou Fujimoto, Kengo Kuma and Riken Yamamoto to oppose the design of Zaha Hadid's 2020 Olympic Stadium in Tokyo.

Maki, who was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1993, has organised a symposium where Japanese architects will protest against the scale of the proposed 80,000-seat stadium, which is set to become the main sporting venue for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic games.
— Dezeen

[It] is the same technology as we use in Holland. It’s made up of concrete caisson, boxes, a shoebox of concrete. We fill them with styrofoam. So with [these] you get unthinkable floating foundations [...]

The house itself is the same as a normal house, the same material. Then you want to figure out how to get water and electricity and remove sewage and use the same technology as cruise ships."

Atlanta and Rio are but two chapters in the long history of displacement that has accompanied mega-events like the Olympics. Similar dynamics reshaped London’s Clays Lane Estate, Beijing’s hutongs, the Marousi Roma settlement in Athens, Barcelona’s Poblenou and Seoul’s hanoks. . . . Today the people of Vila Autódromo are struggling for what housing scholar-activist Chester Hartman has aptly called “the right to stay put.”
— Places Journal

As plans unfold for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, MIT's Lawrence Vale and Annemarie Gray consider the case of Vila Autódromo, a former fishing colony on the Olympic site whose residents have organized to resist displacement. They compare ongoing events in Rio to the... View full entry »

"But now the Olympics is hell for me and for everyone who lives along this street. It is hell and we feel very bitter towards the government. Even if it is prestigious for the country to host the Games it is a calamity, a real calamity."
— BBC News

Daniel Sandford explores the disruptions, the preparations for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics are causing for citizens. People have been relocated to make way for the Olympic Park and other facilities, however they complain that they haven't been fully compensated. Plus, it is already become the... View full entry »

Sydney spent three times its original $2 billion Games budget—its Olympics facilities still operate at a loss. Most of Athens’ stadia remain empty, some in graffiti-covered disrepair.
— thedailybeast.com

Give Coca-Cola points for architectural originality. It has built what looks like a series of red and white plastic blocks that have just been hit with buckshot and are exploding into shards. What is this thing? It is the Coca-Cola Beat Box, a “building that you can play,” as the company’s many young docents will exuberantly explain.
— NYT

David Segal took readers on a tour of the corporate sponsorship pavilions at London's Olympic Park. Mr. Segal found corporate self-promotion run amok. Along with a range of architectural follies. View full entry »

With the London 2012 Olympic Games still fondly in our memories, here is another architectural attraction you may have missed while watching the recent sporting events: the London 2012 BMW Group Pavilion designed by Serie Architects.
— bustler.net

London’s surprising win that morning was attributed to its focus on urban regeneration and legacy: perhaps the first time an Olympic bid had specifically presented the Games as merely the warm up for a longer-term rejuvenation.
— blueprintmagazine.co.uk

It was International Olympic Committee founder Pierre de Coubertin's great dream to marry the aesthetic with the athletic—thus, every Olympics between 1912 and 1948 awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals to artists. There were five categories of individual competition: Architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, and music.
— theatlantic.com

Charles Downing Lay was the only American to win a medal in 1936, taking home silver in the Municipal Planning division of the Architecture category for his design titled "Marine Park in Brooklyn." View full entry »

The 600 seats in question only concern 10-meter platform events, which start Monday. Small portions of the dives may not be visible. The Zaha Hadid-designed Aquatics Centre features a dipping roof that limits viewing from the highest seats.
— sfgate.com

At the 1928 Amsterdam games, athletes were accommodated in spare rooms in boarding houses and aboard ships. The first Olympic Village was built in 1932, in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, but it was dismantled after the games and virtually no trace survives today. Not until the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki did host cities began to plan and develop permanent structures for housing athletes.
— Places Journal

When the Olympic Games open next week in London, showpiece venues like Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre and Populous’s Olympic Stadium will be the center of the world’s attention. But when the games are over, the greatest impact on London urbanism will be from the 2,800 new... View full entry »

He told NPR that the stadium has become entirely divorced from ordinary people.

"We love this building, but we don't like the content they have put in, the kind of propaganda. They dissociated this building [from] citizens' celebration or happiness, [it's] not integrated with the city's life," Ai said. "So I told them I will never go to this building."
— npr.org

Staffers at some London data centers won’t be burdened with long commutes when the 2012 Olympics roll into town this summer and jam up city streets. Instead, they’ll have futuristic sleeping pods to crash in so they can never leave work.

In the past month, a London company called PodTime has sold 19 pods at £1,375 ($2,190) a pop to three collocation facilities, including a data center operated by Interxion, says Jon Gray, the founder of the 1-year-old company.
— wired.com